Which FREE Trialware solution should we implement?

[andrews]

Midnight, your help and advice please.

I had followed the recommendations for Avira as the best Free solution. I was happy with it after test driving for a while and upgraded to the Pro. Found it was efficient and reliable. I have even been referring it to commercial clients of mine, primarily replacing norton on older machines with less memory.

Now I see the Bullguard is giving a free year, and a number of other Top Rated Security suites often offer similar deals.

I know its a freeware forum but most of these deals equate to trialware since after the free first year you need to pay. So my questions are... What is your preferred solution? Is it worth ditching Avira Pro for Bullguard or A2?

Andy

[MidnightCowboy]

My stock answer for security programs has always been that the best for you (or someone else) is the one they can understand and work with the best.
If an existing solution is performing well and has been over time then I'd resist the temptation to change it. You also then remove the possibility of what might be left behind by your old installation affecting the performance of the new. Most vendors provide a dedicated un-installer of some kind but a lot of people won't use them for one reason or another and so end up with problems.

I had some considerable issues on my old XP SP2 system with Avira Pro but I know that many others didn't. I also ran the full version of a-squared for quite a while without any issues although reportedly a lot of others were not so lucky.
Since upgrading to x64 Vista my first choice Comodo was performing faultlessly, and in many respects I was reluctant to remove it but felt that I should have Bullguard on here since we are now featuring it for free. So far everything is good although the lag I'm experiencing when activating download windows seems to be increasing and I see there is a similar issue highlighted in their forum from another user. Bullguard have suggested some steps for me to take in an attempt to verify the cause of this but I'm reluctant to try too much at this stage as I've already managed to mess up my Ubuntu partition connection during the 9.10 upgrade process and if I lose Windows too then I'm stuffed because with this new system I will need the services of my tech guy to get me back online.

Overall, Bullguard is certainly the easiest of the complete solutions I've ever used and they promise even further developments in this direction with V9 without losing the ability to make advanced custom settings.

Unfortunately this is another of those "one size doesn't fit all" situations and really only you can decide which way is best to go.

[kendall]

Midnight,

What does Bullguard offer that isn't covered by a combination of Avast and PC Tools Firewall (with HIPS enabled)? (Since both were recently shown to be tops in their fields by independent (Maltousec, av-comparatives) testing groups.)

One last unrelated question (don't mean to divert the thread)--is A2 considered a full anti-virus/anti-malware/HIPS suite? (I know it does not include a firewall.)

[andrews]

Perhaps I'll get the free license just in case I want to switch or you start raving about the product

Andy